Monday 18 June 2018

Jesus Can

Jesus Can
The apostle Paul writes,
“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.  
For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” 
Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?  
For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.  
Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.   
For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.”1 Corinthians 1:18-25.
The apostle Paul here notes that what Christians believe seems like foolishness. After all we believe Jesus is God incarnate, God in the flesh. That he came to earth to point mankind to heaven. Not only that he did so by allowing himself to be crucified. To be put to death in a most hideous way.
This to man’s way of thinking could be considered ludicrous. Yet Christians the world over believe this.
Such belief to my way of thinking is for many a stumbling block to their belief in Christ.     It takes a great deal of faith to believe that Jesus is God incarnate. That he allowed himself to die on the cross. That he descended into hell, rose from the dead, walked briefly on the earth again, before ascending into heaven.
I think of it this way. First of all God does not do things man’s way.
I look at it like this.
Jesus in coming to earth experienced everything a mortal man experienced. Everything from the mundane, like the smell of dust on a road, the feeling of rain on your face.
Jesus knew what it was like to have friends, to attend weddings and other events. Jesus interacted with everyone from religious leaders, to tax collectors, to lepers, to prostitutes, Roman soldiers and more.
Jesus also knew what it was to be abandoned by friends on the worst day of his life. To suffer a merciless beating and be put to death for a crime that even the Roman Governor said he was not guilty of. 
In the brief thirty-three years he was on this earth he experienced the full range of things that could happen to anyone.
Thus when we stand before Him on judgement day we can never say “you didn’t know what it was like to be a mere mortal”, because He does.
That is apart from the fact that Jesus is God, is why he can rightly judge mankind, because he does understand what it is to be mortal.
Please think about it. 

No comments: